The development and deployment of software has become increasingly complex as new technologies have emerged. In general, the process of developing and deploying software involves many different activities that may be categorized into phases. As one representative example, a given deployment process may include a development phase where the software is initially developed, a testing and/or quality assurance (QA) phase where software is initially tested, a staging phase where the software is tested in its final form before production, and a production phase where the software is actually provided to end users. Other examples are possible as well.
Each phase of a software deployment process is typically carried out in a different environment, which may comprise a computer system that includes or more computing systems. For example, a development phase may be carried out in a development environment, a testing and/or QA phase may be carried out in a testing/QA environment, a staging phase may be carried out in a staging environment, and a production phase may be carried out in a production environment. As each phase is completed, the software is typically deployed to a new environment where the next phase can be carried out. In practice, these different deployment environments vary in scale, with the scale increasing from the development environment to the production environment. For example, a development environment may comprise one or more developer's workstations and perhaps a server computer, whereas a production environment may comprise many different server computers that are networked together.
As the process of developing and deploying software becomes more complex, there is a growing need for an improved system that facilitates this process.